All posts tagged volt

This week Shell and Volkswagon banded together in a big EU lobbying push. Their goal — to promote biofuels as a ‘bridge fuel’ to EVs in what some say has become a rather obvious bid to delay the entry of electric vehicles in large numbers to fleets across Europe. An effort that some analysts are concerned may represent yet one more push to kill the electric car.

(Unofficial Tesla advertisement streamed over a famous speech by Nikola Tesla. A combination of increasingly accessible electric vehicles and renewable energy sources like wind and solar provide hope that human beings can rapidly reduce carbon emissions over the coming years. But the still powerful and established fossil fuel industry continues to attempt to delay progress through its vast monetary power and equally vast legislative, advertising, and public relations based influence. Can we free the captive fossil fuel consumer? Video source: Not a Dream.)

Carmakers, oil companies and biofuels producers are making a desperate bid to dissuade Europe from undertaking fuel efficiency standards for cars, vans and trucks, a push for electric vehicles and many of the other badly needed actions in the transport sector.

Shell recently acquired an interest in Brazil based biofuels industries and it appears that Shell may be using its new biofuels interests as leverage to divide support for a rapidly expanding access to zero-carbon emitting electrical vehicles. If this is true, it wouldn’t be the first time that the fossil fuel industry has lobbied against renewables, attempted to play divide and conquer with renewable energy supporters, or conducted deceptive advertising and public relations campaigns in an effort to retain energy market dominance — negative climate consequences be damned.

A low-lying nation, the Netherlands stands to lose much if sea level rise due to a human-forced warming of the globe starts to rapidly ramp up. A risk that grows as more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere. And with about 50 percent of household carbon emissions coming from vehicle use, a transition to electric vehicles powered by renewable energy could help to dramatically curb both individual and national emissions totals. Currently, the Netherlands is one of the regions of the world featuring the highest rates of EV sales — with ten percent of all automobile sales taken up by electric cars in early 2016.

Among the world’s big car producers, there’s only one major automaker that sells only all-electric vehicles and that’s Elon Musk’s Tesla. A company that is now known not only for its ability to field cutting-edge electric automobiles, but also for its track-record in producing some of the highest quality, highest performance vehicles in the world. Not only do all Tesla cars require no oil, gas or other fossil fuels to run, not only do they produce zero tailpipe emissions or provide the opportunity to produce zero driving emissions when their batteries are charged by renewables like wind and solar, but Tesla autos are also some of the fastest, most luxurious vehicles in the world.

And until now this seemingly contradictory combo of sustainable systems and consumer oriented products has been very pricey. The Model S, Tesla’s flagship offering, starts at $70,000 — a price that puts it in competition with top of the lines Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis. Include all the frills, and a Tesla Model S could sell for well over $100,000.

(Tesla’s charging station network provides free EV charging to Tesla owners. It’s a network that continues to expand along major travel routes in North America. Image source: Tesla Supercharger.)

Sales for Tesla’s high-price, high-quality electric cars have been very respectable. Last year, Tesla sold more than 50,000 EVs worldwide. And while these sales rates are enough to make any luxury vehicle manufacturer envious, Tesla is driving for a huge market expansion over the coming years. Its strategy for triggering this expansion hinges on the success of the economically more accessible Model 3. A vehicle that’s half the starting price of the S at around $35,000. That’s still not a cheap car. But with Tesla providing all the vehicle fuel for free in the form of an increasingly widespread network of EV charging stations, with many nations around the world providing EV incentives in an effort to reduce both emissions and oil dependency, and with Tesla as one of the highest quality and performance vehicles around, the price often presents a very tempting offer.

Use of direct sales allows Tesla to gauge customer interest by offering its models for pre-order. And at the time of the Model 3’s launch in early April, CEO Elon Musk is reported to have expected about 100,000 pre-orders (requiring 1,000 dollars to hold a Model 3 reservation) in total. But the enthusiasm surrounding the Model 3 defied all expectations. The 100,000 pre-order mark was breached in just one day and by now Model 3 preorders are estimated to have hit about 400,000. Overall, Musk now expects pre-orders to easily reach 500,000 by later this year. That’s half a million expected sales of just one single electric vehicle model.

As a synergy exists between low cost, high power and efficiency batteries used to run electric vehicles and energy storage options used for renewable energy sources like wind and solar, there is growing hope that these energy sources can be used to more and more rapidly replace current fossil fuel based energy systems. Wind, solar, and battery systems have all been shown to improve in price and efficiency with economies of scale. So expanding use of these energy systems makes it easier and easier for more and more people to access them. A synergy that has a potential to snowball renewable energy access during a time in which rapid reductions in carbon emissions are now desperately needed.

With the effects of catastrophic climate change now starting to ramp up, it appears that the world is in a very real and dire race between the crucial mitigating influences of renewable energy systems and the expanding and worsening impacts of global warming. Any delays to a necessarily swift energy transition that are achieved by the fossil fuel special interests will result in more and more climate harm being locked in. So action by Shell and Volkswagon this week to delay European EV expansion efforts are very counter-productive to any push to fully and swiftly address the problem of human-forced warming.

10,000. That’s the best estimate for the number of electric vehicles and plug in electric hybrid vehicles that sold in April. And at that pace the US electric vehicle market will have surged to break the 100,000 mark by year end. This healthy sea change allowing access to growing numbers of no carbon and very low carbon vehicles comes just as the world enters a dangerous age of increasing risks due to world climate change. An age where devastating levels of CO2 at 400 ppm and greater are likely to be the norm going forward. And if we are to prevent jumps to 500, 600, or even 1000 ppm by the end of this century, a rapid transition to EVs must remain a keystone to any mitigation and prevention strategy.

So you can imagine why I’m calling for cautious optimism upon seeing Tesla’s Model S fly off sales lots at the rate of 2,000+ vehicles per month over the course of 2013. Not to say that these sales weren’t earned. The vehicle recently received the highest consumer reports rating ever for any vehicle and was recently named motor trend car of the year. This makes both the Tesla S and the Volt extraordinarily high-quality offerings, beating out nearly all gasoline based vehicles on the measure of quality alone (take that EV haters!).

In other words, the Model S is one beast of a great vehicle. It gets 300 miles per charge of electricity, a range that is even the envy of a number of gas guzzlers. And its speed is a warp-like shift from 0 to 60 in 4.4 (you can barely count them) seconds. The Model S is as luxuriant as it is sleek. Its smooth shape and high class features — the very picture of elegance.

I don’t usually brag about material goods. But you have to give Tesla credit. They’re doing the right thing and they’re doing it the right way.

The Model S’s rocket to stardom has set stocks of Tesla to soaring. Earlier this year, Tesla traded at 30 dollars per share. Today, Tesla stocks spiked at 93 dollars. Speculative interest remains high and it appears possible that Tesla may do to the US auto industry what Google did to the internet — result in its rapid transformation.

As a new technology, the future for electric vehicles is anything but certain. However, in the long run, it can confidently be said that if there is any future for the auto industry, it is in EVs and other alternative vehicles. Oil is a depleting and ever more expensive fuel. Combine that factor with the devastating climate change that oil contributes to and what you end up with is the fuel being nothing more than a costly and dangerous dinosaur. So the stakes for Tesla, GM, Nissan, other EV producers and the rest of us couldn’t be higher. If we want to see the automobile survive we’d better hope they succeed.

And success will mean a very long, tough slog. Over 800 million vehicles are currently in operation worldwide. To replace them all with EVs would require that all new vehicles sold be EVs for a period of 20+ years. Current sales are just a tiny fraction of total sales. With gas guzzlers still holding the bulk of the market captive, it will take a massive rate of sales increase for EVs to make a serious dent in the fleet of carbon emitting autos. It’s a tough challenge, but one we will have to undertake if we are to preserve a climate hospitable to human beings and keep the automobile too. And to do this we will not only need to have an increased availability of EVs like the Model S, Volt, and Leaf, we will also need an ever-increasing price on carbon emissions to speed a transition to low or no carbon technologies. Unfortunately, we are still in a position where alternative vehicles have a small but growing market share and where government policy on the part of transition to non-carbon energy technology has been manic at best. So we will need to see these changes to have much hope for the kind of progress we desperately need.

In the mean-time we should all bask in the minor, though hopeful, success of the EV. It has endured many slings and arrows from an pleathora of well-funded and politically well-connected enemies who fought as hard as they could to make certain this day never came. But, it appears, they have failed. And failed grandly at that. Not only are viable EVs now available to consumers, many of these EVs are now among the best cars ever made. These are innovations that have happened on American soil and as a result of American ingenuity. And, as noted above, they represent a hope for transformation to a less damaging form of automobile that, though it should have come sooner, is certainly welcome today.

A massive wave of electric vehicles is starting to build in the US. Over the past month record sales in many EV and PHEV models drove total sales of all plug-ins to 5598, a new all-time record.

Leading the top performers was the Chevy Volt which sold 2851 vehicles this September. The Volt roared in to post a back-to-back record sales following August’s surge. This sales boost seemed to mock an endless stream of negative and unreliable press criticizing everything from the high numbers of vehicles sold to the Volt’s falling price — which made it ever more available to customers.

Directly on the Volt’s heels was the Plug-in Prius. Prius leveraged its powerful brand, a less expensive EV model, and a, somewhat short, though still significant, all-electric range of 11 miles, to sell 1652 units. This rate of sales was far higher than expected and was just two vehicles short of its previous record in April.

The Nissan Leaf also showed strong sales for the month, pushing 984 vehicles out onto the road. Nissan is also starting to market a cheaper and a longer-range version of the Leaf for 2013.

Honda and Mitsubishi made minor showings to round out total known EV sales of 5598. However, Fisker and Tesla do not release monthly sales figures, but probably sold a total of an additional 250 vehicles (approximate). This likely means that total electric vehicle sales for September challenged the 6000 mark.

Already, new offerings for 2013 are starting to become available. Most notable is the Ford C-MAX Energi which is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle like the Volt and the plug-in Prius. With 47 mpg fuel economy and a battery stack that offers a gasoline free driving range of 20 miles, the C-MAX Energi boasts an EPA 95 MPGe average fuel efficiency. The Energi is less expensive than either the Prius plug-in or the Volt and, therefore, may prove a competitor for added sales and driving down EV prices.

With all the new energy swirling around EVs, it appears that total US sales may well exceed 50,000 by the end of this year. The Volt has already sold over 30,000 vehicles worldwide and interest in EVs continues to grow as more people adopt this revolutionary and environmentally friendly new technology.

This surge in alternative fuel vehicles couldn’t come too soon. With the Arctic in rapid decline and with impacts from human caused global warming set to worsen, it is high time the world began a shift to less carbon intensive technologies, and to systems that offer the opportunity for radically diminishing greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, larger EV fleets will greatly enhance US energy independence by taking a bite out of oil consumption and reducing the need for US oil imports.

September saw another record month for Chevy Volt sales in the US. Overall, 2851 Volts were sold just edging out August’s previous record of 2831 US sales. A combination of word of mouth, new Volt marketing strategies, and very appealing incentives to buyers pushed the revolutionary new auto out at ever-increasing rates.

Overall US sales are now 16338 for 2012 with total US sales since December of 2010 at 24335. Worldwide total sales for both the Volt and Ampera are now likely within a few vehicles of the 30,000 mark making the Volt the best selling electric vehicle of all time.

This month’s sales come despite a massive negative media storm in the conservative press attempting to kill off the revolutionary and disruptive new vehicle and a plug in electric design that threatens to lay the groundwork for breaking transportation’s dependence on fossil fuels across the world. The shrill storm of what could only be called negative advertising included a wide range of attacks using fuzzy math to inflate the Volt’s cost, to brand the vehicle as a taxpayer subsidized failure, or to, in an schizophrenic kind of wobbling criticize the Volt’s lowering cost to consumers.

I suppose these various magazines and pundits are against the American people getting a good deal on a revolutionary new technology that promises to kick open the door to US energy independence? In any case, the deafening silence from these sources on over 40 billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies is telling to say the least. When will the fuzzy math stories on subsidized $10 per gallon gasoline emerge? We’re waiting.

In any case, the Volt is the spearhead in a surging US electric vehicles market. Overall, about 5,000 electric vehicles have sold in the US just this month alone. Surging Volt sales in August and September were met by rising Leaf sales as well. The Nissan Leaf, which had seen declining sales over the past few months staged a comeback in September and saw 984 vehicles fly off lots for the month. Nissan had said the Leaf would stage a comeback and made good with a 43% increase over the previous month. In all, a total of 5,212 Leafs have sold so far this year in the US. In addition, a longer-range, lower priced version of the Leaf is about to release. These new advances should make the race between EVs ever more interesting.

Though figures for Toyota’s plug-in Prius haven’t yet posted for September, they should be in the range of 800-1200 based on initial estimates. Toyota’s plug in, though boasting less all electric range than the Volt, is seen as a somewhat affordable competitor. But it appears that Chevy’s own discounts and affordable leasing options on the Volt have made it more appealing to the slightly less electric Prius. Toyota, however, is a powerful brand and shouldn’t be counted out in this competition.

Additional electric vehicle sales came from Tesla, Fisker, Mitsubishi and Ford. Given the increasing interest and expanding market for US electric vehicles, it appears that the domestic market is on its way to breaking 50,000 total EVs and PHEVs sold by the end of 2012. Overall, a substantial leap forward for an appealing and highly beneficial new technology.

America’s most customer-loved automobile broke a new monthly sales record this August. According to GM, sales figures for the Chevy Volt exceeded 2,800 vehicles for August. The Volt’s previous best sales month was March at 2,289 vehicles.

So far this year, the Volt has sold over 13,000 automobiles in the US and is on track to sell nearly 20,000 by the end of this year. Worldwide, the Volt has already sold over 25,000 vehicles in 2012.

In 2011, the Volt was the highest-rated vehicle for customer satisfaction. This despite a wide-ranging political attack by republicans and oil-special interest sources to discredit the vehicle.

The Volt’s revolutionary engine system allows the vehicle to travel for 40 miles in an all-electric mode before switching to gasoline assisted driving. Many Volt drivers report making it more than 1,500 miles between fill-ups in day-to-day driving.

If large portions of the US vehicle fleet were made up of cars like the Volt, it would drastically reduce oil imports. Just a 30% market penetration of plug-in electric hybrids could cut US oil consumption by as much as 2.5 million barrels per day. That’s more than twice the domestic oil produced via Eagle Ford and Bakken combined.

In addition, the Volt emits far less in the way of greenhouse gasses. According to the EPA, the Volt emits 84 grams of carbon per mile averaged over its lifetime. In comparison, a similar-sized combustion engine sedan emits four to five times as much carbon over its lifetime. Considering that personal vehicle transport accounts for 20% of CO2 emissions, a world-wide adoption of vehicles like the Volt could cut total emissions by as much as 15%.

This beneficial reduced fuel demand, however, is likely to eat into oil company profits. Which is probably one reason why the Volt has drawn flack from certain media and political circles. Increasingly, these sources have towed the oil industry line in messaging, both denying global warming and simultaneously attacking any replacements for fossil fuel energy. This destructive attempt at market domination would result in vast harm to technological progress as well as call into question the future health and even continuance of civil society should the worst impacts of climate change emerge.

So one should take any such dissuasion with a grain of salt. These aspersions hold no value and result only in harm to US interests and world climate security.

Over the past year conservatives have engaged in brutal and ongoing attacks against one of the greatest American automotive innovations ever the hit the road — the Chevy Volt — but today, thankfully, these attacks appear to have stopped.

An American Innovative Marvel

The Chevy Volt is the world’s first successful plug-in gas electric hybrid. This revolutionary vehicle allows drivers to run their vehicles in all electric mode for up to 55 miles before recharging or switching to burning gasoline to extend the vehicle’s range to over 350 miles. Since most commutes are about 26 miles, Volt drivers can reap amazing gains in fuel efficiency. Reports back from Volt drivers show that they are driving, on average, 1,000 miles between fill-ups. This gives the vehicle an average fuel efficiency of over 130 miles per gallon.

In addition, the Volt is wildly popular among owners. In 2011, it ranked highest in customer satisfaction out of any vehicle sold.

Attacks against Volt harm sales

The fact that such a powerful technology is available on the road is a miracle of modern engineering. But despite these obvious benefits and the fact that this amazing vehicle was an all-American invention, conservatives engaged in a massive politically driven attack against it. Ignoring the fact that the Volt began development under the Bush administration, republicans called it an Obamamobile and went about doing everything they could to demonize it. These attacks resulted in some dealers refusing to sell the vehicle for political reasons.They also alienated would-be Volt buyers — patriotic Americans concerned about US imports of oil from places like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

But, even from the start, there were a few defectors in the republican ranks. Bob Lutz, a prominent republican derided attacks against the Volt, saying that these attacks were misguided at best.

Conservative media about face

Now, the conservative media appears to have done an about face on the Chevy Volt, today airing a piece on Fox News that could be best described as a Volt promotion. Fox even posted an analysis showing that the US could be energy independent from the Middle East if we managed to sell 30 million Volts by 2020. Comparing it to the ipad, Fox then went on to state that so long as economies of scale were able to be reached the Volt could radically drop in price making it much more accessible to average Americans.

Work together for energy independence?

The admissions by Fox today represent a huge break in the conservative log-jam over alternative energy technologies that help to reduce oil prices. It is a welcome change, for a certainty. And perhaps, at least, conservatives and liberals can finally agree on the need for alternative fuel vehicles and plug in electric hybrids. If we work together, America could well become a leader in this critical new technology, serve to help reduce our own oil dependence and, through exports of revolutionary vehicles like the Volt, reduce world dependence on oil as well.

Mitt Romney, in a recent tirade against the clean energy industry, gave progressives another gift today. “You can’t drive a car with a wind mill on it,” he said, clownishly. One wonders what Romney’s fixation with cars sporting various things strapped to the top is. I suppose the dog wasn’t enough for him and now he’s trying wind mills? If he were smart, he might have first tried a solar panel:

Romney’s own tirade follows directly on the heels of Rush Limbaugh who, after losing many of his advertisers for his mad dog slut-shaming of Sandra Fluke, has shifted his eyes to fresh meat — the U.S. renewable energy industry. But this particular attack involves a rhetorical disappearing act.

“The problem with the Volt is just like all of Obama’s green energy, there’s no business there yet. There’s no solar energy business yet. There’s no wind energy yet,” Rush said on his radio show today.

I suppose Rush missed the 50 gigawatts of wind energy capacity the US now boasts. Or, perhaps, Rush is unaware of the 5 gigawatts of solar energy systems now in place? That 71 billion dollars worth of solar power sales in 2010? Nada, according to Rush. Or the Chinese dumping of solar panels in an attempt to bankrupt a rocketing U.S. alternative energy market? Rush says it all never happened.

As for no business for the Volt — it sold more than 1000 units last month, more than the comparatively priced Corvette. Rush must also have missed the millions of hybrid electric vehicles on the road worldwide or the 150,000 all-electric vehicles now on highways in California.

It seems that Rush and Romney would both like to deny the existence of an industry that now produces more energy than all the nuclear power plants in the world. Much like climate change, they’re trying to hide something that is undeniably real with another smoke and mirrors act.